March 2025

🕊️ How Silence Is a Symptom — And a Form of Survival By Natasha Charles McQueen, Ph.D. People die in silence every single day. Not because they were not in pain.Not because they did not give signals.But because no one knew how to listen without needing words. Let me speak plainly:Silence is not nothing. Silence is the scar tissue of speech that was never safe. In hospitals, silence is labeled as “non-compliant.”In schools, it is punished as “defiance.”In courtrooms, it is mistaken for guilt.In mental health systems, it is ignored — until it becomes loud enough to terrify someone.And by then, it is often too late. 🩸 Silence is what you do when you cannot scream. When your mouth remembers violence.When your voice has been punished.When you are too tired to advocate for yourself one more time.When every word feels like it will betray the truth living in your chest. Some people experience panic attacks.Some people lash out.Some people collapse.And some people — go quiet. Stillness is not always calm.Silence is not peace.Sometimes, silence is a scream stuck in the throat of a body that has been carrying too much for too long. 🚨 Silence is an emergency. But the sirens do not go off.There is no blood. No bruises. No broken glass.Just a look.Just a breath held a little too long.Just someone staring through you, trying not to drown in a room full of people. There are no emergency services for heartbreak.There are no ambulances for despair.But we need them.We need a 911 for the soul. That is why I created RESET & S.P.A.C.E.Because silence is often the first symptom — and if we do not learn to respond to it with the same urgency we give to a heart attack, people will keep dying with no one to name what happened. 📡 Silence Speaks In the systems I train, we read silence the way we read vitals.We look for it. We respect it. We respond to it. We ask: Did their voice change? Did their pacing stop? Are their eyes going vacant? Did the music stop? Did the rocking begin? Did their energy shift without warning? Because the body always speaks before the collapse.And silence is a form of fluency we must learn to read. 👁️‍🗨️ Why We Miss It We miss silence because we are afraid of it.We rush to fill it.We mistake it for peace.We reward the quiet child.We trust the calm inmate.We discharge the soft-spoken patient. But silence can be a survival strategy.Especially for those who were never allowed to fall apart out loud. 🔒 For Some of Us, Silence Is Culture Let us be real.Some communities are raised in survival so deep that silence becomes the baseline. In Black families: “Do not tell anybody our business.” In immigrant households: “Be grateful and do not complain.” In institutions: “Keep your head down or you will get hurt.” So we learn to cry quietly.To freeze instead of fight.To smile while dying inside.To become fluent in silence because the world never respected our noise. And if you are Black, brown, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent — you may already know:Silence is not absence. It is protection. It is protest. It is sacred. 🧠 In Clinical Spaces, Silence Becomes Dangerous Because when a person goes silent, the system goes blank. Most therapists are not trained to treat the quiet.They are trained to ask. To probe. To diagnose. To measure. But what if the silence is the diagnosis?What if the absence of words is the loudest data point in the room? 🌱 So What Do We Do? We listen with everything else. With breath.With rhythm.With pacing.With presence.With object, scent, sound, and sacred pause. We say: “You do not have to speak to be seen.” “Your silence is safe here.” “I am listening with more than my ears.” “Let us breathe instead of talk.” We sit. We mirror. We wait.Not as a power move.But as permission.As protection.As response. 🔮 And If You Are Silent Right Now… I want to speak to you — directly. You are not broken.You are not failing.You are not unreachable. You are brilliant for surviving. And if silence is the only thing keeping you alive — keep it.Let it hold you.Let it shield you.Let it rock you gently until your voice comes back on your terms. And when it does?If it does? We will be here.Still listening.Still with you.No pressure. No timeline. Just space. 🌌 Final Word: Silence Is a Signal We must stop waiting for the collapse.We must stop punishing quiet.We must stop treating silence like absence. Because silence is not the opposite of communication —it is its own language. A language of protection.A language of pain.A language of sacred holding. So the next time someone goes quiet, ask yourself: “What is this silence saying?” And respond like it is urgent. Because it is. 🕊️

An Invitation from the Calabash Family. Dear Readers🥳, Mental health is one of the most essential aspects of overall well-being, yet it remains one of the most misunderstood. Every day, people ask themselves questions such as:Where do I begin when it comes to taking care of my mental health? What should I talk about in therapy? How do I manage the weight of anxiety, grief, or emotional overwhelm when life keeps moving? If you have ever asked yourself those questions, you are not alone. This blog exists to offer clear, supportive answers through the lens of psychoeducation. My name is Dr. Natasha Charles McQueen. My mission is to provide mental health education that is accessible, relevant, and rooted in truth. I do not offer therapy or treatment here. Instead, I offer knowledge, perspective, and tools that can help you better understand your emotions, your experiences, and your options for healing and growth. This space is for anyone who is trying to feel more in control of their emotional life. Whether you are new to conversations about mental health, supporting a loved one, preparing for therapy, or simply seeking clarity and peace, you will find something here that speaks to you. On this blog, you will find: Educational posts about emotional wellness, boundaries, stress, anxiety, grief, and trauma responses Reflections and coping tools that can be applied to everyday life Guidance for parents and caregivers navigating emotional challenges in family life Questions for self-reflection, growth, and deeper self-awareness, occasionally, poetry—because sometimes emotions ask to be expressed in language that is less clinical and more human Poetry allows me to communicate what facts and strategies sometimes cannot. It speaks to emotion, to memory, to the parts of ourselves that ache and heal in silence. My poems will appear throughout the blog as another way of encouraging reflection, hope, and connection. There is no fixed schedule for posting. I will share when it feels timely and purposeful. My goal is not to flood you with content, but to offer meaningful insights that support your journey. Mental health is a journey, not a destination. It is not always linear or easy—but you do not have to walk it alone. My hope is that this blog can be a steady resource when you need guidance, encouragement, or simply a moment to reflect. Welcome—and thank you for being here. .

Introduction Emotional literacy is not evenly distributed. While the capacity to feel, name, and regulate emotion is universal in potential, it is differentially nurtured—and often differentially punished—across gendered lines. Cultural scripts around masculinity, femininity, and gender nonconformity shape the emotional lives of individuals from early childhood, often in ways that are invisible until they become pathological. Emotional suppression is not random; it is encoded in systems. It is socialized. And in many cases, it is required for survival. This essay examines how patriarchy, gender norms, and trauma intersect to create distinct emotional burdens for men and marginalized genders, and explores the psychological and political work of re-learning emotional literacy in a landscape that has long rendered it suspect. The Emotional Cost of Masculinity From infancy, boys in many cultures receive a narrow emotional curriculum. They are more likely than girls to be left to cry longer without comfort, less likely to be spoken to about feelings, and more likely to be redirected or silenced when expressing distress. These early experiences send a message: You are expected to manage your emotions alone. By adolescence, many boys have internalized the masculine emotional code: stoicism, invulnerability, and the suppression of fear, sadness, tenderness—even joy—emotions deemed “unmanly” or “weak.” Research in developmental psychology confirms that by age five, children already associate sadness and vulnerability more with girls than boys. By adolescence, boys are significantly less likely to seek support, less emotionally expressive in peer relationships, and more likely to externalize distress through aggression or withdrawal. The suppression of vulnerability is not simply a preference; it is a survival strategy under patriarchy. But this strategy has costs: depression masked as irritability, anxiety converted into control, grief expressed only through silence or substance. Emotional literacy becomes not just underdeveloped—it becomes disavowed. For many men, especially those raised under rigid masculine ideals, feelings must be either denied or managed through domination—of the self, others, or environment. Marginalized Genders and the Double Bind For women and gender-diverse individuals, the emotional landscape is shaped not by absence, but by overexposure. Where men are told not to feel, women and nonbinary people are often expected to feel for others. Emotional expressiveness is permitted, but only within socially sanctioned roles: caretaker, empath, support system. Anger, assertiveness, or grief that exceeds decorum is pathologized—labeled as hysteria, instability, or ungratefulness. This results in what Arlie Hochschild termed emotional labor—the expectation that marginalized genders will not only feel their own emotions but also manage the emotional needs of others, especially those in power. Emotional labor is unpaid, unnoticed, and unreciprocated. It extracts energy without consent. And it teaches a distorted emotional lesson: Your value lies in your attunement to others, not your authenticity to self. For queer, trans, and nonbinary individuals, the terrain is more complex still. Emotional expressions may be scrutinized, politicized, or erased. They are punished both for conforming to and for defying gendered emotional expectations. Authenticity becomes a risk. Emotional survival often requires code-switching, compartmentalization, or vigilance. Sometimes, safety requires hiding how it actually feels to be alive. Trauma, Patriarchy, and the Loss of Feeling It is impossible to disentangle emotional restriction from trauma. Many forms of trauma—especially developmental and systemic trauma—are internalized through affective disruption: the suppression of emotional truth to preserve attachment, safety, or social inclusion. Patriarchy itself is a traumatizing system. It disconnects men from their inner world by linking openness to weakness. It burdens women and marginalized genders with the responsibility of emotional regulation—for everyone but themselves. It creates a double bind in which no one is permitted full emotional subjectivity without cost. Over time, these conditions generate what Judith Jordan calls chronic disconnection—a state in which the individual no longer trusts emotion to be safe, responsive, or meaningful. Emotional literacy is not merely undeveloped—it is seen as dangerous or irrelevant. This is not a personal failure. It is the result of systems that made emotional suppression a survival strategy. The Work of Undoing To reclaim emotional literacy under these conditions is not just healing—it’s political. Psychological. Relational. It requires not only learning a new vocabulary, but unlearning the script that made emotion a liability in the first place. In a men’s group, one participant—a former soldier—broke down mid-sentence: “I’ve never told anyone I was scared. Not once. Not even my wife.”He didn’t need feedback. Just the space to say it aloud, and not be shamed for it. That, too, is emotional literacy: naming what has never been named. For men, this work means grieving not just losses, but entire emotional selves that were never allowed to form. It means learning that strength without softness is only armor. And that the need to be held does not make you weak—it makes you human. For marginalized genders, it means reclaiming emotional expression as sovereign, not service-oriented. It means setting boundaries around emotional labor. Refusing the inherited role of container. Validating rage, numbness, grief—not as dysfunction, but as intelligent responses to chronic emotional overuse and erasure. Healing practices that support this work must be attuned to power, context, and consent. Emotion-focused therapies, somatic work, and gender-liberatory group spaces can offer essential scaffolding. The task is not just to feel—but to feel safely, without fear of exile or exposure. Conclusion: Toward Emotional Justice Emotional literacy is not merely an individual skill—it is a form of cultural resistance. It is the radical reclamation of full humanity from systems designed to fragment it. This reclamation is not a return to neutrality—it’s a revolution. To feel fully is to become sovereign over your emotional life. It is to refuse the roles assigned by patriarchy and instead speak from truths that begin in the body, pass through the heart, and emerge without apology. We do not all begin with the same emotional permissions.But we do not have to end where we began.

Introduction Emotional literacy is often conceptualized as a cognitive achievement: the capacity to identify, label, and articulate emotional states. But long before emotion becomes word, it lives in the body. The body is not a container for emotion—it is its original language. Every feeling begins as a physiological event: a tightening, a flushing, a holding of breath, a pulling away, a leaning in. The body speaks in pulses and contractions, in temperature shifts, in muscular impulses, in the urge toward movement or stillness. It is not simply that the body expresses emotion—it is the site of emotion. To become emotionally literate, then, is not first to speak more fluently, but to feel more precisely. This requires a return to the body as the primary medium of emotional knowing. The Pre-Verbal Nature of Emotion Neuroscience confirms what trauma-informed clinicians have long observed: emotions do not emerge first in the neocortex—the realm of language and meaning—but in the limbic system and brainstem. These subcortical structures process threat, safety, and relational cues before conscious awareness. We feel long before we think. This explains why someone may “know” a situation is safe, yet still feel anxious. Or why a person can describe an emotion with perfect articulation, yet remain affectively numb. The body’s signals often precede—and outlast—cognitive interpretation. Eugene Gendlin’s concept of the felt sense is vital here: a bodily knowing that is murky, pre-linguistic, and yet profoundly trustworthy when attended to with care. Emotional literacy, through this lens, is not simply about naming feelings—it’s about cultivating the capacity to listen to the ambiguous, affective murmur beneath the surface of thought. Suppression, Expression, and the Body’s Archive When emotion is allowed—when it is met with attunement, mirrored accurately, and metabolized through expression or movement—it completes its biological arc. But when emotion is dismissed, shamed, or feared, it becomes lodged in the musculature, in posture, in breath. The suppressed emotion does not disappear; it migrates into the body. Shoulders lift chronically. Jaws clench. Breathing shallows. Pelvises constrict. Over time, these patterns harden into character structures: the vigilant stance of someone who learned to expect danger, the collapsed chest of someone who learned their needs were unwelcome. Wilhelm Reich called these “body armors,” and they are visible even when a person insists they are fine. Somatic literacy—the ability to read one’s own bodily cues—is essential to healing. This is not merely about noticing tension but understanding it as a form of encrypted memory. Somatic Therapies and the Restoration of Feeling Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy are therapeutic approaches grounded in the understanding that trauma and emotion are stored not only in memory but in the body’s physiological responses. These modalities help clients track internal sensations, allowing incomplete emotional processes to resolve through subtle shifts in movement, orientation, or breath. Consider a client who, during a session, instinctively turns their head to the right—something they hadn’t done in years. In the safety of the therapeutic relationship, this movement releases a held tension in the neck and chest. As tears come, the client realizes this was the direction they looked during a frightening event in childhood—but had since avoided without knowing why. That simple turn becomes a gateway to release, integration, and reclaimed agency. Somatic work is often slow because the body moves at the pace of safety. A tremor, a sigh, a spontaneous stretch—these are not small events. They are often the completion of survival responses frozen in time. Where talk therapy may offer insight without resolution, somatic work gives language to what has never been spoken: the ache beneath the numbness, the impulse that was never enacted, the fear still stored in the diaphragm. This is not regression. This is integration. Mindfulness and the Art of Tracking Mindfulness—when properly understood—is not relaxation. It is the disciplined, curious attention to the moment-to-moment fluctuations of internal experience. As a tool for emotional literacy, mindfulness is not about detachment, but specificity: Where is this tension located? Is it sharp or dull? Moving or still? What word, image, or memory arises alongside it? Mindfulness invites us to stay with emotion in its embodied form, resisting the urge to interpret or suppress. Over time, this cultivates interoceptive awareness—the ability to read the internal terrain of one’s own body, and in turn, the landscape of one’s emotional life. From Somatic Silence to Somatic Sovereignty Many individuals arrive in adulthood unable to name their feelings—not because they lack language, but because they’ve been dislocated from their bodies. This disconnection is not a personal failure. It is often the residue of trauma, cultural conditioning, or early environments where emotion was unsafe to feel, much less express. Relearning emotional literacy, then, is not just psychological. It is a physiological homecoming—a return to the body as both witness and refuge. To feel is to inhabit the body.To inhabit the body is to recover the full range of human experience: grief and pleasure, fear and desire, contraction and expansion. Somatic work does not bypass the mind—it anchors it. It restores coherence between what is known and what is felt, between what was endured and what is now possible. The body remembers everything.Emotional literacy begins when we learn how to listen. 📝 Optional Addition Reflection prompt:“What sensations arise in my body when I feel overwhelmed? Can I stay with them gently, without needing to change them?”

Introduction We are not born knowing how to feel.We are taught—by what is spoken, and more often, by what is not. Emotional literacy—the ability to recognize, understand, express, and regulate emotions—is foundational to mental health, relational stability, and the development of a coherent sense of self. Contrary to popular belief, emotional literacy is not an innate trait, but an acquired capacity, largely shaped during early childhood through repeated emotional interactions with caregivers. These formative experiences teach children not only how to relate to their own emotional states but also how to navigate the emotional worlds of others. This article explores how children learn—or fail to learn—how to feel. Drawing on theories of attachment, emotional socialization, and family systems, it examines the psychological consequences of emotional invalidation, neglect, and enmeshment. It also considers how adults who were emotionally undernourished in childhood can begin the lifelong task of emotional relearning through inner child work and reparenting practices. Attachment and the Emotional Blueprint John Bowlby’s attachment theory, supported by decades of research, posits that early caregiver-child relationships serve as the blueprint for emotional and relational functioning. When caregivers are emotionally attuned and consistently responsive, children form secure attachments. They internalize the belief that emotions are valid, manageable, and worthy of expression. They learn that others can be trusted to help them regulate distress and that their feelings make sense. In contrast, insecure attachment styles arise from chronic emotional misattunement: Avoidant attachment develops when caregivers discourage emotional expression. These children learn to suppress their feelings in order to maintain connection. A child who cries and is met with silence may quickly learn to stop showing vulnerability at all. Anxious attachment forms in response to inconsistent or intrusive caregiving. Children become hyper-attuned to emotional cues and may exaggerate their emotions to elicit comfort. The child who must cry louder to be seen begins to equate big feelings with survival. Disorganized attachment emerges in environments marked by fear, chaos, or abuse. Emotion becomes dangerous—something unpredictable and overwhelming. A caregiver may comfort in one moment and frighten in the next, leaving the child in a state of constant inner conflict. In all three insecure patterns, emotional literacy is compromised. Children may grow up with limited emotional vocabulary or internal confusion—torn between what they feel and what they are allowed to show. Parenting Models and Emotional Encoding Beyond attachment styles, specific parenting approaches shape the way children come to understand emotion. Emotion socialization theory outlines four primary styles: coaching, dismissing, disapproving, and laissez-faire. Of these, only emotion coaching reliably promotes emotional competence. Emotion coaching involves: Recognizing emotions as opportunities for connection, Validating the child’s emotional experience, Labeling emotions clearly, Setting boundaries while helping the child problem-solve. A parent practicing emotion coaching might say, “I see that you’re upset because your toy broke. That’s really frustrating. Let’s see if we can fix it together.” In doing so, they normalize the emotion and offer containment. In contrast, dismissive or disapproving responses can silence or shame a child’s emotional expression. A child who hears, “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” learns that feelings are dangerous. Over time, these children internalize emotional scripts like “Sadness makes me weak” or “Anger drives people away.” Children also learn through observation. A parent who stiffens at vulnerability, lashes out in anger, or numbs out emotionally sends powerful nonverbal messages. Even without words, the child absorbs: This is how we handle emotion. This is what gets you love. This is what gets you punished. Emotional Neglect and the Invisibility of Need Emotional neglect—the chronic failure to notice or respond to a child’s emotional needs—is one of the most insidious wounds of childhood. It leaves no visible scars, yet deeply undermines a child’s sense of self. Without consistent mirroring and emotional validation, children are left to weather internal storms alone. Neglectful environments often give rise to: Alexithymia: difficulty identifying or describing feelings, Low emotional granularity: vague or limited emotional vocabulary, An internalized sense of unworthiness: the quiet belief that one’s feelings are either too much or not enough. A child raised in emotional silence may grow into an adult who is intellectually capable but emotionally stunted—high functioning on the outside, but disconnected on the inside. They may struggle to name what they feel, trust what they need, or tolerate their own emotional intensity. Family Dynamics and Emotional Culture The broader emotional climate of a family serves as the backdrop for a child’s emotional development. In emotionally avoidant families, stoicism is celebrated, and vulnerability is seen as weakness. In emotionally chaotic households, feelings are expressed explosively, boundaries are blurred, and emotional safety is inconsistent at best. Two particularly harmful patterns are: Enmeshment: where the child is expected to manage or absorb the parent’s emotional distress. In these families, the child may suppress their own feelings to protect the caregiver, learning that emotional fusion is the cost of love. Disengagement: where emotional connection is minimal or absent. Members operate in silos, and feelings are often met with indifference, logic, or distraction. In both dynamics, emotional literacy is skewed. Enmeshed children may become overly attuned to others while remaining estranged from their own needs. Disengaged children may distrust emotion altogether, mistaking numbness for calm. The Intergenerational Transmission of Emotional Illiteracy Children don’t just learn emotional patterns—they inherit them. Emotional neglect and invalidation often pass quietly from one generation to the next. A parent who was never taught to comfort themselves is unlikely to know how to comfort a child. What feels personal is often deeply ancestral. Neuroscience supports this pattern: early relational experiences shape the development of the right hemisphere of the brain, which governs emotion, attachment, and self-regulation (Schore, 2001). When emotional needs are met with attunement, the brain wires for resilience. When they are ignored or met with threat, the brain wires for survival—through repression, hypervigilance, dissociation, or control. Without intervention, these patterns often repeat. But they are not immutable. Inner Child Work and the Possibility of Relearning Adults who were not adequately

Episode: Vagus, Baby, Vagus The vagus nerve is the tenth cranial nerve—also known as CN X—and it is the longest and most complex of the cranial nerves. It is a central player in the parasympathetic nervous system and serves as the primary communication highway between the brain and the body. In this episode, we are going to cover what the vagus nerve is, what it does, how it relates to stress, digestion, and emotion, and how you can stimulate it to regulate your nervous system. Let us begin with the basics. [Segment 1: Structure and Function] The vagus nerve originates in the medulla oblongata of the brainstem. From there, it extends through the neck, into the chest, and down into the abdomen—innervating major organs including the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and digestive tract. “Vagus” comes from Latin for “wandering,” which is appropriate—it quite literally wanders through the body. It is a mixed nerve, meaning it contains both motor and sensory fibers. Approximately 80% of the fibers in the vagus nerve are afferent—they carry information from the body to the brain. Only 20% are efferent—transmitting signals from the brain to the body. In short, your brain is constantly listening to your body, and the vagus nerve is the main conduit for that sensory information. [Segment 2: The Parasympathetic Nervous System] The vagus nerve is the primary component of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Its job is to counterbalance the sympathetic nervous system—what we commonly call the “fight or flight” system. Parasympathetic activity is associated with the “rest and digest” state. When the vagus nerve is activated, it: Slows the heart rate Stimulates digestive activity Promotes relaxation Reduces inflammation via the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway Modulates mood and emotional regulation through feedback loops with limbic structures Think of the vagus nerve as the body’s internal peacekeeper. When active, it signals to the body and brain: “You are safe. You can rest.” [Segment 3: Vagal Tone and Health Outcomes] The strength and flexibility of vagal signaling is known as vagal tone. Higher vagal tone is associated with: Improved heart rate variability (HRV) Better emotional regulation Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease Lower levels of systemic inflammation Faster recovery from stress Improved social engagement and empathy Low vagal tone, conversely, is associated with: Anxiety and depression Irritable bowel syndrome Autoimmune dysfunction Emotional dysregulation Poor sleep quality Vagal tone is not fixed. It can be improved with consistent training and behavioral practices. [Segment 4: Stimulating the Vagus Nerve] There are several evidence-based methods for stimulating vagus nerve activity. These are non-invasive and do not require equipment. Slow, Deep Breathing Breathing at a rate of 5–6 breaths per minute, especially with prolonged exhalation, activates the vagus nerve. This enhances parasympathetic tone and reduces sympathetic arousal. Cold Exposure Brief exposure to cold, especially on the face or neck (cold water splash, cold packs), can stimulate the vagus nerve via the mammalian dive reflex. This slows the heart and calms the nervous system. Singing, Humming, Gargling The vagus nerve innervates the vocal cords and muscles at the back of the throat. Activities that vibrate this region stimulate vagal afferents. Meditation and Mindfulness Practices that promote present-moment awareness and interoceptive attention—such as body scans or breath awareness—modulate vagal activity through top-down cortical regulation. Social Connection Positive social interactions—especially those involving eye contact, prosody, and co-regulation—engage the social engagement system, which is vagus-mediated through the myelinated fibers originating in the nucleus ambiguus. Vagal Nerve Stimulation (VNS) There are also medical devices—approved for treatment-resistant depression and epilepsy—that provide electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve, typically via an implanted electrode in the neck. However, this is reserved for clinical populations. [Segment 5: Vagus Nerve and the Gut-Brain Axis] The vagus nerve plays a central role in the gut-brain axis—the bidirectional communication between the central nervous system and the enteric nervous system. It carries information from the gut microbiome to the brain, influencing mood, cognition, and behavior. For example, certain probiotics—classified as psychobiotics—have been shown to affect anxiety and depression symptoms through vagus-mediated pathways. When vagal communication is impaired, gut dysfunction and mood disorders often co-occur. [Conclusion] The vagus nerve is not a fringe topic. It is a foundational structure in neurobiology, immunology, and psychophysiology. It links your emotional life to your physical body. It tracks your internal state and tells your brain whether or not you are safe. It modulates your heart, your gut, your immune system, and your sense of connection to others. It is a real-time bridge between biology and experience. Learning to stimulate and support your vagus nerve is not just a self-care practice. It is a nervous system intervention. So the next time you feel overwhelmed, anxious, or dysregulated—remember this: Vagus, baby. Vagus. And breathe. Would you like the next episode written in this same fashion? I suggest we tackle “Cortisol & Me: A Toxic Romance” or perhaps “The Prefrontal Cortex Needs a Nap”. Let me know your preferred direction. You said: “Cortisol & Me: A Toxic Romance” ChatGPT said: Excellent choice. Here is the full, detailed script for the next episode of The Nervous System Diaries, titled: